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Law, History, and Literature as Narrative in The Sense of an Ending
by
Samuel C. Kulvete
April, 2014
Director of Thesis: Tom Douglass, PhD
Major Department: English literature
ABSTRACT: This thesis explores how Tony Webster constructs personal narrative in The Sense
of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Using the work of Hayden White, J. Christopher Rideout, and
Frank Kermode as a critical foundation, the paper discusses the intersection of legal, literary, and
historical lenses for viewing narration. Of particular interest is “the fantasy space of the trial,” a
term introduced in this paper that applies to situations in which literary characters imagine
themselves in hypothetical courtroom spaces. Barnes’ novel also uses correspondence (letters,
notes, and e-mails) to create a convergence point for legal, historical, and literary narrative. Law,
history, and literature are all constructs receiving social support that provide a method for
ordering the difficulties and uncertainties of the human experience.
Law, History, and Literature as Narrative in The Sense of an Ending
A Thesis
Presented To the Faculty of the Department of English
East Carolina University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
M.A. in English Literature
by
Samuel C. Kulvete
April , 2014
Director: Dr. Tom Douglass
Law, History, and Literature as Narrative in The Sense of an Ending
by
Samuel C. Kulvete
APPROVED BY:
DIRECTOR OF
THESIS: ______________________________________________________________________
Tom Douglass, PhD
COMMITTEE MEMBER: ________________________________________________________
Helena Feder, PhD
COMMITTEE MEMBER: _______________________________________________________
Liza Wieland, PhD
CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT
OF ENGLISH: _________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Johnson, PhD
DEAN OF THE
GRADUATE SCHOOL: _________________________________________________________
Paul J. Gemperline, PhD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my parents and grandparents for their continued support throughout
my education. I thank Dr. Michelle Eble for the opportunity to have a graduate assistantship
through two years here at ECU. Thank you to my committee composed of Drs. Liza Wieland,
Helena Feder, and Tom Douglass. Also, I would like to thank Drs. Feder and Douglass for their
ongoing guidance and support during my intellectual growth at this institution. I thank the other
graduate students in the program for their camaraderie and their efforts to create a truly tight-knit
community of scholars. Thank you to my English 1100 and 1200 students for being my first
students ever. Finally I would like to thank Drs. Nicole Caswell, Tracy Morse, Ken Parille,
Nicole Sidhu, Tom Herron, and Professor John Hoppenthaler for the many wonderful classes
I’ve taken during the past two years.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: PROLOGUE…………………………………………………………………1
Diachronic and Synchronic Narratives……………………………………………...2
Narrative Rationality………………………………………………………………...9
Kermodes’ Literature and Historiography………………………………………….15
CHAPTER 2: DISCUSSION……………………………………………………………….23
Historiography in the Classroom…………………………………………………....23
The Fantasy Space of the Trial……………………………………………………...25
Writing Letters, Writing Narrative………………………………………………….34
CHAPTER 3: CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………...39
WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………….51
Law, History, and Literature as Narrative in The Sense of an Ending
“What was memory after all, but the recording of a number of possibilities which had never been
fulfilled?” (91)
D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
Chapter 1: Prologue
In The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes explores the tension between narrative
conventions that people use when they try to tell stories. His protagonist Tony Webster struggles
to reconstruct the narrative that leads up to his childhood friend Adrian’s suicide and Tony’s
eventual role as the legal inheritor of Adrian’s diary. The novel is a case study of the unreliable
narrator, whose self-awareness leads him to announce the limitations of his own credibility.1
Tony isn’t naïve enough to believe in perfect memory: near the midpoint of the book he reflects,
“We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus
time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d
forgotten?” (69). Recognizing the “oddities” of the past and abandoning faith in pure memory,
Tony uses three constructs to provide a frame in which he can reconstitute the story of him and
his childhood friend Adrian. The most prominent of these structures is the law. Tony’s interest in
framing the past legally leads him to seek what he calls “corroboration” from the statements of
others who were involved in the story, as well as from various forms of correspondence—notes,
letters, and emails. Tony sees the process of decoding the past as a sort of legal case, but he also
1 See Flaubert’s Parrot: “When a contemporary narrator hesitates, claims uncertainty, misunderstands, plays
games and falls into error, does the reader in fact conclude that reality is being more authentically rendered?” (89).
2
sees it in terms of historical and literary narratives. Collectively, these constructs give Tony
access to pre-established strategies for making what he hopes to be a truthful narrative.
Diachronic and Synchronic Narratives
Hayden White’s work on historiography and fiction frames an understanding of how
“narrative” functions in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. In “The Structure of Historical
Narrative,” White outlines the functional difference between stories with defined endings versus
stories whose endings remain uncertain. In stories with clear-cut endings, White argues, the role
of argumentation, themes, and structure is reduced (114). These complete stories provide a
comprehensible sequence to understand how a character or group of characters advances through
time from point A to point B (114). They show a finished plot without proposing a general
pattern or structure for all human behavior. On the other hand, stories lacking definitive
endpoints propose one or more possible outcomes in the future. To accomplish this, they must
rely upon a structural theory for patterns of human behavior. Argumentation assumes a logical
outcome for the future based on what is already known. White classifies open stories as
“synchronic,” in that they propose a stable theory about human nature or history that should tell
readers how things will turn out later (115). They share a common structure with similar stories
that happen again and again throughout history. These synchronic, or “open” stories place more
importance on theme. In White’s lexicon, a diachronic story clearly has motifs and patterns, but
the reader can ignore these themes and still derive enjoyment simply by following the plot of the
story. White refers to diachronic stories as “processionary” and synchronic stories as
“structuralist” (118). The diachronic story arranges events in a procession through time that leads
3
to an already confirmed ending. Synchronic stories take place in the middle of things and set
down a structure of patterns and arguments that can point toward a logical future outcome.
The Sense of an Ending’s Tony Webster is caught in the tension between these two
different narrative modes: he tries to establish specific incidents in his life as matters of fact, a
storytelling mode that is concerned more with plot than argument. However, he also wants to
make a structural argument about generalized themes in life which might also structure the
stories of others. For White, these two storytelling modes achieve two different effects, namely
to answer two questions. Plot-based diachronic storytelling answers the question “what
happened,” while structure-oriented synchronic storytelling answers the question “what’s the
point?” (115). Tony strives to answer both questions, as is made clear near the end of the novel
when Veronica accuses him of missing the point: “You just don’t get it, do you? You never did,
and you never will.” (138). “What’s the point?” is less concerned with a finished story because
the “point” can be extracted from the underlying structure: Veronica doesn’t accuse Tony of
missing the point only this one time. The failure to “get it” is an underlying structural aspect of
Tony Webster’s whole life.
Hayden White avoids a simple dichotomy between processionary and structural
narratives by adding a third type. The “impressionistic” narrative provides a set of “data” that is
not organized around a sequential plot, nor does it correspond to a known theoretical structure
(118). The opening page of The Sense of an Ending displays this type of tendency: Tony
“remembers, in no particular order” a group of images from his past (3). It is an impressionistic
list of visual data, ironically “ordered” by the bulleted list format presented in the book. Tony’s
emphasis, though, is that he does not recall these images diachronically. The first stage of his
narrative process is impressionistic: he recalls a swirl of memories that have been disconnected
4
from the original linear sequence. Before launching into the narrative, Tony states “if I can’t be
sure of the actual events anymore, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left” (4).
He is quite aware that many of his memories are more like an echo or a residue than a permanent
record.
Since there are some things Tony can’t remember, he tries to arrange what he can
remember diachronically, so he can fill in the blanks. This sequencing helps answer the “what
happened?” question that White claims is the driving force behind a closed plot. As we see
throughout the novel, Tony can’t help but extrapolate general patterns and structures from his
experience—feelings and sensations that might be experienced by anyone at some point in time.
Tony, himself, uses all three narrative modes described by Hayden White, and each has its own
goal. What must be determined is what effect or purpose each narrative mode has on the reader.
Tony’s desire to string images and incidents into a linear plot represents the processional,
or diachronic mode of constructing narrative. When he finds a memory that he can trust, he
anchors it as a defined plot point in the story’s sequence. At the beginning of the novel, Tony
thinks,
I’m not very interested in my schooldays, and I don’t feel any nostalgia for them. But
school is where it all began, so I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have turned
into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty.
(4)
This is Tony’s announcement that the narrative is about to begin. Up to this point, the reader has
seen only a bullet list of six remembered images, 2 followed by Tony’s statement that time
“holds us and moulds us,” but no narration of actual events (3). The terms “hold” and “mould”
2 See the opening page of the novel. Tony remembers an inner wrist, a steaming sink, semen in a shower drain,
two rivers, and a tub full of cold bathwater. All of the images are related to fluids and flows, possibly suggesting the flow of time.
5
suggest a container or a closed, diachronic procession. Although time goes on, it holds the
individual’s life within a defined set of temporal parameters. On the other hand, the metaphor of
the “mould” suggests a structural pattern for how time affects everyone. With this paradox, the
reader can use the entire novel to explore of the tensions between White’s processional,
structural, and impressionistic narrative theories.
Tony’s expression “where it all began” suggests that his story has a definite beginning,
even though the referent of “it” is unclear. Where did what all begin? Although the reader
doesn’t know what it is, Tony has established tension and promised drama. The reader assumes
that Tony is about to tell the story of something important. With the phrase “where it all began,”
Tony sets a defined point of origin for the story. From this origin, he will search for plot points
that he hopes will lead him, like a trail of breadcrumbs, to a “sense” of an ending. However,
Tony’s use of the common expression “where it all began” points to something more structural.
Even the best efforts to narrate in the processional manner can result in detours to the structural
mode. Barnes’ novel shows that it is often quite difficult to draw a hard line between these two
narrative approaches.
Tony is aware of the tension between these storytelling modes and the paradoxes they
contain. He makes special note of how “incidents [can turn] into anecdotes” (4).3 The idea of
“incident” appears more like a defined plot point, something objective and closed-off that
already happened and fits into White’s processional model of narrative. On the other hand, the
choice of the term “anecdote” suggests a memorable event that can teach a lesson or make a
general argument about the human condition. While an incident is a more trivial plot point
describing something that happened, an anecdote is infused with meaning. The term “anecdote”
3 See p. 58 in The Sense of an Ending for a similar transformation. Colin, Alex, and Tony have a reunion in which
they talk about Old Joe Hunt’s and Phil Dixon’s history classes. Tony notes, “We were already turning our past into anecdote.”
6
fits into White’s structural, or synchronic, model of narration. Although an anecdote reflects a
plot point, it is more significant in its pursuit of meaning and an answer to the question “what’s
the point?”
Tony reverses the incident/anecdote transformation by (re)naming the opposite
transformation from “approximate memory” to “certainty” (4). In this case, an “approximate
memory” might be reinforced in one’s mind by a general theory or structural argument for what
“probably happened,” fitting into the synchronic mode. When time “deforms” this approximate
memory into a “certainty,” we again have a solid point in time that fits into a diachronic plot.
This reversal indicates that Tony’s method of reconstructing narrative will be complicated. Not
only does the processional become more theoretical and turn to structural, but also the opposite
happens, too.
Tony likes to make thematic generalizations about youth, old age, and women, among
other topics. Barnes often offsets these in paragraphs separated by an extra line break, making
these aphoristic nuggets stand out visually on the page. For example, “ … it strikes me that this
may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different
futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others” (88). The novel
contains several of these short paragraphs that interrupt the narrative flow to offer what have
come to be axioms for Tony. Certainly, not every youth invents futures for himself, nor does
every adult invent new pasts for others. Nevertheless, Tony takes small observations about what
has happened to him personally and converts them into general theories about humanity. He
takes moments from the procession of his personal narrative and places them into an underlying
structure that would be recognizable to nearly anyone.
7
Another example of the tension between diachronic and synchronic appears in one of
Tony’s classroom memories. Old Joe Hunt’s history class discusses the “origin” of the First
World War, creating a diachronic story that has a defined beginning by virtue of the term
“origin” (11). The class talks about the typically accepted origin point of the war, the
assassination of Franz Ferdinand, arriving at the idea of a “chain of individual responsibilities”
that followed this historical moment (11, 13). The image of the “chain” signifies a procession,
fitting nicely into White’s diachronic narrative model. The emphasis on distinct actions of
individuals implies plot points (certainties) rather than structural arguments about human
behavior. Metaphoric relationships, however, can point to generalities. This is why the concept
of a “chain of responsibilities” is paradoxically both diachronic and synchronic. The actual
image provided by the metaphor points toward a plotted sequence, but the fact that it’s a
metaphor in the first place indicates something more structural or theoretical. Once again, the
distinction blurs between diachronic and synchronic.
Young Adrian Finn also sees the unstable and shifting nature of narrative modes. Joe
Hunt calls on Adrian for his perspective on the origin of WWI, to which Adrian asks, “Isn’t the
whole business of ascribing responsibility a kind of cop-out?” (13). For the rest of the novel, the
reader must wonder if the pursuit of definite origins is actually an evasion, a way of ignoring
whatever occurred before the origin point. Adrian follows with: “We want to blame an individual
so everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of exonerating
individuals” (13). Blaming the individual fits the paradigm of the diachronic, processional
narrative. The assignment of blame answers the question of “what happened,” or more
specifically “who did it?” It assumes a confirmed event or plot point that is sealed within its
position in the march of history. On the other hand, blaming a historical process is a structural,
8
synchronic move. This type of blame takes up the idea that “history repeats itself” according to a
known structure. The historical process point of view allows us to create theories and
subsequently arguments about patterns human behavior.
However, Tony’s classmates evoke White’s third narrative mode, the impressionistic
narrative, despite the fact that “back then, we were most of us absolutists. We liked Yes vs. No,
Praise vs. Blame, Guilt vs. Innocence” (11). Although Tony’s friends typically deal in
dichotomies, the history classroom points out that some distinctions might be irreducible to
simple binaries. Adrian supposes that there could be no blame at all, neither on individuals nor
processes, but that “it’s all anarchic chaos, with the same consequence” (13). The chaos view
aligns best with the impressionistic narrative concept, organized neither by diachronic plot nor
synchronic structure. Tony’s friend Colin shares the chaos view, claiming that “everything was
down to chance, that the world existed in a state of perpetual chaos, and only some primitive
storytelling instinct, itself doubtless a hangover from religion, retroactively imposed meaning on
what might or might not have happened” (12). As a result, Colin argues for impressionistic
narrative that humans forcibly organize. Colin’s view of forced organization bears traces of both
the processional and structural views: the act of “imposing meaning” is structural, answering
“what’s the point?” On the other hand, “what might or might not have happened” is a question of
plot. Colin proposes religion as the origin for the human need to make narratives. While Tony
never mentions religion in the novel, his fanaticism in hunting down memories and corroboration
borders on the religious.
It appears that Tony uses all three of White’s types of narration in a meta-diachronic way:
he first recalls impressions, which are reconstructed into a plot, which is subsequently interpreted
to find structures that make an argument about the nature of humanity and memory. Tony uses
9
all three of these means of narration, but his actual process of reconstructing the past relies on a
linear arrangement of these narrative types. However, his process is recursive: he doesn’t simply
recall every possible impression and then sequence them all at once. He repeats the process time
and time again. New impressions are always unearthed while he plots and structures past
experience. This lends a layer of meta-impressionistic narrative to the whole process because
there is always an out-of-order, nonstructural aspect present.
Narrative Rationality
White’s theories illuminate a general idea of how Tony researches and narrates his past,
but they don’t form a complete picture. In Tony’s experience, the broad term “narrative”
includes at least three important subcategories: legal, historical, and literary. The
synchronic/diachronic/impressionistic distinction is useful for thinking about narrative in a
temporal sense. Law, history, and literature provide a vocabulary for situating social and political
factors within time. Thinking about these societal narrative frames adds richness and lends
purpose to the questions “what happened?” and “what’s the point?”
In “Storytelling, Narrative Rationality, and Legal Persuasion,” J. Christopher Rideout
outlines some aspects of legal narratives. Using terminology similar to White’s, Rideout agrees
that the function of structural narrative is to persuade an audience, in this case a jury (56).
Rideout argues that people understand structural narratives “innately,” thereby making them
more persuasive due to their apparent naturalness (55). This coincides with White’s claim that a
structural narrative makes general arguments about how people behave and the typical way that
life unfolds. To explain why people are persuaded by structurally-oriented narratives, Rideout
uses the term “narrative rationality,” which he subdivides into the categories of “narrative
10
probability” and “narrative fidelity” 4 (63). Rideout states that probability is “formal,” while
fidelity is “substantive” (55). In other words, narrative probability is a measure of what will most
likely happen based on a known form or structure. Fidelity, on the other hand, is tied to the real
evidence and material substance of what happened.
Of course, Tony uses both narrative probability and fidelity to reconstruct his past. His
need for “corroboration” in the form of letters, e-mails, diaries, and personal testimonies from
others falls under the category of narrative fidelity—these items are supposedly more “true” to
the past than memory can ever be. For example, after the break-up with Veronica, Tony receives
a letter from her mother. Tony realizes “I wish I’d kept that letter, because it would have been
corroboration. Instead, the only evidence comes from my memory—of a carefree, rather dashing
woman who broke an egg, cooked me another, and told me not to take any shit from her
daughter” (43). Many of Tony’s memories are fragmentary, impressionistic images that he tries
to string together into a diachronic narrative. He remembers some details—an egg here, an
offhand statement there—but the picture is far from complete. Tony values corroborative
material objects because they provide a definite sense of what happened. In other words, they
can help establish plot points that help him to convince himself he has achieved a high level of
narrative fidelity.
In another instance, Tony speaks with his ex-wife Margaret about Adrian’s diary. Tony
has learned that the diary has been left to him, but Veronica chooses to withhold it. Without even
knowing what could be in the diary, Tony knows why it is so important to obtain it: “the diary
was evidence; it was—it might be—corroboration. It might disrupt the banal reiterations of
memory. It might jump-start something—though I had no idea what” (85). Once again, Tony
4 Rideout borrows these terms from Walter Fisher’s Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of
Reason, Value, and Action. University of South Carolina Press, 1989.
11
views a piece of writing as “corroboration.” It is worth noting that neither the diary nor the letter
would help Tony confirm anything that he “witnessed” in the past. He would use each document
to view the same shared past through the eyes of one of the other participants. Both objects
would, nonetheless, assist Tony by adding new memories to the timeline of events that he
reconstructs throughout the novel. By examining the story through multiple perspectives, Tony
can enhance narrative fidelity by seeing overlaps between different points of view and seeing
how the writing and correspondence confirms or denies what he already believes about the story.
If we assume that narrative fidelity aligns with processional narratives, or “what
(actually) happened,” there might be some clue as to why Tony often falls back on a legal frame
of reference for his experiences. The purpose of the court system is to determine what happened,
who is guilty or responsible, and then close the case, effectively ending the narrative. The term
“closed case” appears several times throughout The Sense of an Ending, but it is first used during
a reunion between the original three school chums. One year after Adrian’s suicide, Tony meets
Colin and Alex for drinks at a hotel. As they leave, Tony notices that
The shared memory of Adrian was not enough to hold us together. Perhaps the lack of
mystery around his death meant that his case was more easily closed. We would
remember him all our lives, of course. But his death was exemplary rather than
“tragic”—as the Cambridge newspaper had routinely insisted—and so he retreated from
us rather quickly, slotted into time and history. (58)
Several terms in this passage show the spirit of the diachronic narrative. The “absence of
mystery” shows that the “what happened?” question has been at least partially answered. Tony
notes that this lack of mystery leads to a “closed case,” reinforcing the feeling of a finished story
with a known outcome. In response to the newspaper’s claims, Tony rejects the notion of a
12
“tragic” death, which be clichéd and therefore structural. It would take its place within the
pattern of all deaths called tragic throughout all time. Instead, Adrian’s case is “exemplary,”
representing an individual, idiosyncratic plot point. The fact that the newspaper “routinely
insist[s]” also shows a structure because the paper takes this action more than once. However,
Tony denies the structure. Moreover, Adrian’s death is “slotted into time and history” taking its
place as a confirmed sequence of plot points along a chronological procession. Tony sees
Adrian’s story as a “case.” Much of the terminology in the passage above aligns with the view
that a legal narrative is “something that happened.” One role of the court is to define a beginning,
middle, and end for the narrative. At this moment Tony doesn’t want to see Adrian’s death as
part of a pattern, but as a unique moment appropriate to Adrian’s individuality.
Sometimes, corroboration is simply not available and the gaps must be filled in with
assumptions based on narrative probability. When Tony “remembers” the image of “bathwater
long gone cold behind a locked door,” he confesses that this is something he has remembered but
not necessarily witnessed (3). This “memory” is a creation of narrative probability. In this
instance Tony “sees” an established structure, or stock image for what a bathtub suicide would
most likely look like. The idea of “probability” might be contested in that it implies a
universality or almost unrealistic uniform quality to human experience. Rideout is aware of this
problem, and he approaches it by addressing the debate over whether narrative is psychologically
innate or something that is a social construct and a product of language.
Since Tony frames his narratives in terms of the social constructs of history, law, and
literature, it will be useful to view The Sense of an Ending with the “exogenous” view that
defines narrative as socially constructed and externally supported (Rideout 58). Rideout avoids
taking a side on whether narratives come from within or without, but he offers the following to
13
explain the latter view: narratives might be “almost universal perhaps as a consequence of the
fact that humans experience social reality temporally or of the fact that the human life cycle itself
contains the elements of a narrative structure—a beginning, middle, and end, to which we assign
meaning” (58). Although we may all live different “social realities” which lack a sense of
universality, the unifying force that creates the need for narrative is the experience of time
passing. Frank Kermode echoes this idea with the assertion that “at some very low level, we all
share certain fictions about time, and they testify to the continuity of what is called human
nature, however conscious some, as against others, may become of the fictive qualities of these
fictions” (44). So, the sense of universality implied by “narrative probability” can be partly
explained by the fictions and narratives that we all must hold to some extent as a result of Time.
Rideout notes that Walter Fisher uses the terms “narrative probability” and “coherence”
almost interchangeably. Although he accepts the synonym, Rideout claims that “coherence” is
too general and must be broken down into the attributes of “consistency” and “completeness”
(64). Consistency refers to how well the elements of a story seem to fit together—in Tony’s case,
do all of his memories and evidence actually seem like part of the same story? Rideout also
asserts that the elements of the tale, of course, can’t contradict each other (65). As Tony pieces
together the past, he encounters competing evidence and must select the information that doesn’t
contradict the story he has built up so far. Rideout provides an intuitive definition of a
“complete” story—one that “contains all of its expected parts” (65). Given the title of Barnes’
book, it seems that Tony is searching for an ending, which would presuppose a beginning and
middle as the “expected parts.” Tony’s legal, literary, and historical frameworks for seeing the
world also supply their own categories of “expected parts” if Tony is to tell a complete story in
any of those frames. Rideout sees consistency and coherence in terms of rhetoric and persuasion,
14
stating that a consistent and complete story is easier for an audience or jury to accept. Using
Rideout’s lens that he borrows from Fisher, any audience of The Sense of an Ending should ask
if Tony’s story is consistent and complete, and whether or not the answer has any impact on how
convincing the story is. Furthermore, what is Tony’s story trying to convince us of in the first
place?
In his discussion of narrative probability, Rideout also talks about how well a given
narrative “corresponds” to a “stock stories” that are based upon “cultural archetypes” (67-68).
Since they are archetypical, stock stories can be seen as structural, making them correspond with
White’s synchronic or argumentative narrative. A stock (structural) story makes an argument for
“what ‘could’ happen, what ‘typically’ happens, not to what actually happened” (Rideout 67).
Stock stories remain in the realm of the probable rather than the actual. Tony might use models
of history or literature that he learned in school as stock patterns for the way he remembers his
life. As a schoolchild, he and his friends indeed have grandiose aspirations to live historical or
literary lives, to fit the stock story of a literary figure or historical hero. In giving a historical or
literary framework to his own life, it seems that Tony to some extent would be escaping the
material realities of what really happened. Rideout notes that “stock stories contain standard
models for human action but also allow generalizations about the meaning of those actions” (68).
Although Rideout tests his terminology on actual court cases, his general principles are
still applicable to fiction. Other scholars examine more directly the relationship between legal
systems and literary fiction. In Law and Literature, Ian Ward draws from Richard Weisberg’s
analysis of The Stranger to understand a potential function of legal situations represented in
literature. Ward notes how Weisberg’s work proposes that the “intensity” of a courtroom scene,
for example, “furnishes a particular powerful parable that can be used to describe the human
15
condition” (143). A legal story written with sparse dramatic detail, Ward argues, invites the
reader to fill in details on his or her own. This type of participatory reader experience not only
draws the reader in as a “juror” for the events of the story, but also allows the reader to become a
part of the events by filling in “more and more of him - or herself to the story,” thereby
experiencing the intensity of the human condition alongside the character in question (143). In
this view, the reader becomes both the juror and the defendant, allowing for a deeper sympathy
with the character and enabling for the reader a deeper examination of the self.
The Sense of an Ending fits this paradigm—it is sparse, intense, and leaves many holes
that lead to “what ifs.” I later argue that Tony Webster puts himself on imaginary trial during
several critical moments in the novel. As the action of the trial unfolds inside his head, Tony
plays the dual role of both jury and defendant. The reader participates in this same paradox as he
or she accompanies Tony through the detective game of viewing evidence and corroboration. We
get to see the same letters and emails that Tony does and draw our own conclusions. Lacking a
full account of the evidence, the reader, as Ward proposes, must “add more of himself to the
story,” resulting in the reader’s own feelings of “guilt and despair” which give way to a sense of
responsibility (143). The assignment of responsibility weighs heavily on Tony’s mind as he
traces the events that lead to Adrian’s suicide. The “chain of individual responsibility” that
Adrian associates with the history-writing process is equally at home in the courtroom.
Kermode’s Literature and Historiography
Like Hayden White, Frank Kermode analyzes the narrative crossroads between literature
and historiography. Kermode’s work comes in to play when we think about Tony Webster’s
fixation on literary fiction. Tony sees an idealized version of human experience that would have
16
attributes similar to a protagonist in literary fiction. Tony’s theory of what literature is must be
unearthed because one of the ways he constructs his own personal narrative is on literary
grounds. On literary fictions, Kermode claims:
Fictions are for finding things out, and they change as the needs of sense-making change.
Myths are the agents of stability, fictions the agents of change. Myths call for absolute,
fictions for conditional assent. (39)
Rather than seeing literature as fiction, Tony fits it into the category of myth. Often when the
reader sees the word “Literature” through Tony’s point of view, it begins with a capital letter
(16). This stylistic detail gives the sense that literature is stable, absolute. It is an institution.
Tony’s view on the stability of literature is revealed by his claim that “Real literature was about
psychological, emotional and social truth as demonstrated by the actions and reflections of its
protagonists; the novel was about character developed over time” (16). Tony’s belief in a “real
literature” limits what literature can and can’t be, thereby turning it into stable myth rather than
changing fiction. Even his insistence upon a “character developed over time” is a myth that
absolutely denies the possibility of a character that fails to change over time. Tony provides a list
of appropriate topics 5 for literature, all of which he classifies as “real, true, important things”
(16). His thoughts are colored by a narrow view of what is possible in literature. Tony sees
novels as objects constructed according to a set of formulae that guarantee their status as “real
literature.” This is supported by Kermode’s claim that “Myth operates within the diagrams of
ritual, which presupposes total and adequate explanations of things as they are and were” (39).
The construction of literature is ritualistic for Tony. His interest in the thought of “Life like
5 These topics are “love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes
and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls” (16).
17
Literature” (16) suggests we should make note of any ritualistic behaviors that Tony exhibits
during the construction of his own narrative.
Kermode also claims that “Myths make sense in terms of a lost order of time […]
fictions, if successful, make sense of the here and now” (39). In Tony’s case, it seems that these
two temporal zones can’t exist in a separated state. Part of his project involves making sense of
the past in order to provide a clearer picture of the present state of things. Within the first pages
of the novel, it is clear that Kermode would call Tony’s “lost order of time” unstable. Although
there appears to be an unchanging mythological backdrop of the past that Tony believes in to a
degree, the stability of memory is constantly shaken as new information comes to light. Just as
diachronic and synchronic narration merge and overlap, so do myth and fiction. The conflict
between different storytelling modes always applies tension and pressure to Tony’s ability to
construct narrative. Often, the theoretical lines drawn between different narrative approaches
become blurred or forgotten.
Tony’s hope to see his life in novelistic terms might stem from what Kermode calls “the
tension or dissonance between paradigmatic form and contingent reality” (128). Tony’s reality is
messy, uncertain, and filled with gaps and missing pieces. The freedom to choose how to go
about making sense of things can be a source of endless anxiety as one chooses which evidence
to accept, whose account to listen to, and how to put the pieces of a life story together into a
meaningful whole. Kermode reminds us of the obvious point that literature diverges from reality
because this freedom is missing: “ … in the novel, there can be no just representation of this, for
if the man were entirely free he might simply walk out of the story” (138). Since Tony tends to
view literature as stable and mythological, the feeling of leading a novelistic life would entail a
strangely comforting limitation on personal choices. Tony could simply act how his ideal
18
protagonist would act. A life trajectory fitted to the framework of what should happen in a novel
would be less vulnerable to what Kermode calls “contingent reality.” A paradigmatic and
structured existence could help to eliminate the anxiety caused by daily contingencies.
In Mythologies, Roland Barthes proposes that one of the main functions of myth is to
“transform history into Nature” (116). By applying the language of myth to an event, the
historical event appears natural and unavoidable. Barthes claims that in doing so, we allow
ourselves to “rationalize” what has happened (117). This is part of Tony Webster’s project. He
aims to rationalize what has happened as he makes sense of the tangled web of the past. Tony
wants to arrange the past into a reasonable sequence that a sensible person could accept. When
one considers Tony’s interest in living a literary life alongside Barthes’ assertion that “Literature
is a mythical system,” it becomes evident that Tony hopes to mythologize his past—that is to
say, take his own personal history and make it seem naturally and unavoidably literary (Barthes
122).
According to Barthes, one quality of literature is that it is “at the very start mythified
(therefore made innocent) by its being fiction” (133). This partially explains the youthful interest
of Tony and his friends in leading literary lives (or at least Tony remembering himself thinking
that way): youth is associated with innocence. The Sense of an Ending could be a coming-of-age
story after all, one whose protagonist reflects on the period of his life when innocence is lost on
many fronts. By mythologizing his personal history, Tony makes the events appear “natural”
while preserving their innocence at the same time. Despite the filter of innocence, however,
Tony’s narrative project carries with it substantial risk if we continue to view it in Barthian
terms. Barthes warns that “the mythologist is condemned to live in a theoretical sociality” and
that “his connection with the world is of the order of sarcasm” (147). By turning history into
19
literature and subsequently into myth, Tony builds a layer between himself and reality. Even in
the most strictly literal sense, the reader notices how isolated Tony becomes in his single-minded
mission to determine what happened. In Barthian terms, Tony’s actions represent the
“poetization” of reality that occurs when one turns history into an “impenetrable” mythology
(149).
For Tony, literature supplies a sense of security and certainty about how life’s questions
and problems are supposed to resolve themselves. He recalls thinking as a youth that “I shall live
as people in novels live and have lived. Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger,
ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance” (102). This connects to his
idea of “real literature,” in which every event and each emotion felt should be of gravity and
importance. All of the feelings “in attendance” are literary clichés that are supposed to make a
character’s trials and tribulations meaningful. Tony’s parenthetical aside regarding more ecstasy
shows a desire to write the feelings of his own life, the impulse to think “but then I will feel this
next.” As an adult, he reflects more cautiously on these literary aspirations, viewing them as
times when his “mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness” (102). The
image of drunkenness suggests a raving fantasy world or detachment from reality that may end
up having little correspondence to life. The pull of adventure is a hallmark of youth that, from
Tony’s perspective, fades as the realities of adult life settle in. Tony realizes that “There was a
moment in my later twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered
out. I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about. Instead, I mowed my lawn, I
took holidays, I had my life” (102). If Tony himself hints that the aspiration to lead a literary life
is nothing but a useful fantasy, the reader must question how realistic it is for him to piece
together his life story exactly the way he does in the novel.
20
Shortly after meeting Adrian, Tony finds out that Adrian’s mom has left his father. Tony
thinks that “our house, as far as I could tell, contained no mysteries, to my shame and
disappointment” (17). From a young age, Tony views a life without mystery and secrets as
boring. There must be a code to crack in order for a life to be interesting and novelistic. He goes
on to think, “in a novel, Adrian wouldn’t just have accepted things as they were put to him” (17).
In order to validate one’s existence and live a worthwhile life, one must actively seek and decode
mysteries, or “go off on a Quest to Discover the Truth” as Tony puts it. The capitalization here
indicates that Tony retrospectively sees his youthful self viewing life in terms of big themes and
grand, sweeping ideas. One of Tony’s existential problems is that a life without mystery is non-
literary and, therefore, boring. Sometimes people force a sense of mystery onto events that might
not be so mysterious. Once this occurs, the next problem becomes which methodology should
one use to solve the enigma and get to the bottom of the mystery? Tony’s approach is to work
within the tradition of the detective novel, which for him includes operating within the
framework of an imagined courtroom testimony.
In his own book The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode addresses the significance of
the second hand. He claims that “the clock’s tick-tock I take to be a model of what we call a plot,
an organization that humanizes time by giving it form” (45). This gives a clue about what makes
the second hand so “plausible” for Tony Webster. In Kermode’s view, tick automatically creates
the sense that tock is on the way, regardless of the fiction that we maintain as the length of time
that goes between them (45-46). There is a feeling of progress toward an inevitable future
resolution. Tony needs to be able to look back and locate the tick at the beginning of the story to
be able to look toward a future tock, the sense of closure and security that he hopes have after
completing his Quest for Ultimate Truth. Remembering that “tick” should in theory lead toward
21
a certain “tock” gives one the feeling of being in the midst of a diachronic narrative. Is
Kermode’s “form” similar to the “mould” that Tony speaks of on the first page of the novel,
giving us a stable, closed narrative with beginning and end? Or, on the other hand, is it more of a
structure or pattern for Tony’s story that can be more readily understood synchronically?
Kermode distinguishes between chronos, fluid, moving time; and kairos, a distinct
moment of crisis, fulfillment, or meaning (47). All of the clues that Tony picks up and evidence
that he seeks come from kairotic moments—starting with the list of images that he remembers to
begin the novel. These are all moments of personal crisis or change, images which incidentally
involve fluids, tying them to distinct moments within the flowing time of chronos. When Tony
tries to determine key moments in the past that may have set off unstoppable chains of events, he
retroactively imposes a sense of kairos on these plot points that he finds. Tony seems most
interested in what Kermode calls Tillich’s “idiosyncratic” understanding of kairos—a “’moment
of crisis,’ or, more obscurely, ‘the fate of time’” (47). “Fate” is an apt word here, as are all of the
many episodes that Tony recalls that slowly build toward something critical and inevitable.
Kairotic moments become anchors for him to link different stages of the story to; they are crisis
moments that push the action of the story forward. As a part of his sleuthing game, Tony forces
memories into the concept of “key moments” that give reasons for and add significance to what
happened to Adrian, Veronica, and the other companions of his youth. Tony seeks reasons for his
own ending with Veronica as well as Adrian’s death. He ultimately wishes to come to a “sense of
an ending” of his own in which he will be satisfied with the answers to all of his questions. This
is why key moments are so critical to him: as Kermode states, “kairos is the season, a point in
time filled with significance, charged with meaning derived from its relation to the end” (47).
Kermode’s interpretation of kairos seems to challenge the easy distinction between White’s
22
questions “what happened?” and “what’s the point?” As Tony’s thoughts and actions
demonstrate over the course of the novel, diachronic and synchronic narratives can’t be so easily
separated into two distinct categories. Events can be chronological signposts telling what
happened while also carrying great significance and meaning.
The reader must consider that Tony might misidentify the proper kairotic moments on
which to anchor his story. Kermode notes that when we write history, “everything is relevant if
its relevance can be invented” (56). An image such as Veronica dancing to the stack of 45s may
be of no particular importance, but Tony ascribes meaning to it because it is among the small
number details available to him. When Tony reads Veronica’s email explaining her father’s
death some thirty-five years ago, he looks for “traps, ambiguities, implied insults. There were
none—unless straightforwardness itself can be a trap. It was an ordinary, sad story—all too
familiar—and simply told” (121-122). In this moment, Tony diagnoses the problem with his own
detective hunt. A cynic might say that Tony’s final thought about the email could be a tagline for
The Sense of an Ending itself, fulfilling his childhood fear that “Life wouldn’t turn out to be like
Literature” but instead a sad, familiar, and simple story.
Chapter 2: Discussion
“But what helps? What do we need to know? Not everything. Everything confuses. Directness
also confuses” (102).
-Flaubert’s Parrot
Historiography in the classroom
Somewhere during his early school days, Tony picks up the habit of taking big H
Historical principles that would be used to study governments, nations, or wars, and applying
these principles to the more quotidian personal histories of people around him. Similar to the
way that Tony views life through the lens of literature, he uses this historical view to add
meaning to the everyday events that happen to him and his friends. Viewing life as a personal
history adds gravity to what at first glance might seem insignificant. Old Joe Hunt wraps up the
semester by posing the question “What is History?” to the class. Adrian answers that “History is
that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of
documentation” (18).6 It is an abstract, one-size-fits-all answer that arguably represents the thesis
of the entire novel. When Hunt asks Adrian to apply his theory by providing a concrete example,
Adrian cites the recent suicide of their classmate Robson, noting that “It’s a historical event, sir,
if a minor one. But recent. So it ought to easily be understood as history” (19). Tony Webster
will spend the whole novel taking Adrian’s approach to personal history. Themes and structures
learned in school and applied to “capital-H History” are transferred to the more pedestrian
exploits of Tony and his friends. The novel tests line between major and minor historical events,
6 See Flaubert’s Parrot for the metaphor of biography and history as a fishing net that catches some details and
misses others, while the fisherman also chooses to throw some back (38). FP also compares the elusiveness of the past to a “greased piglet” (14).
24
exploring the divide between what counts as history and what doesn’t. Seeing everyday life as
history is a way to reassert that it really happened and legitimize the significance of the
quotidian.
Adrian debates Joe Hunt on the importance of “direct evidence” (19) and “Robson’s
testimony” (20) if someone in the future were to write Robson’s history. Old Joe Hunt counters
that Robson “may well have kept a diary, or written letters, made phone calls whose contents are
remembered” (20). This foreshadows the exact conflict that Tony will deal with as he pieces
things together throughout the novel. Obviously lacking a personal testimony from Adrian, Tony
can only go with documentation left behind coupled with the memories of whomever else is still
around. The abstract classroom discussion regarding how historiography is performed will
continue to inform the way Tony uses personal historiography decades later.
In his adult life, Tony notes that
I’ve followed all the official history that’s happened in my own lifetime—the fall of
Communism, Mrs. Thatcher, 9/11, global warming—with the normal mixture of fear,
anxiety, and cautious optimism. But I’ve never felt the same about it—I’ve never quite
trusted it—as I do the events in Greece and Rome, or the British Empire, or the Russian
Revolution. Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that’s been more or less agreed
upon. Or perhaps it’s that same paradox again: history that happens underneath our noses
ought to be the clearest, and yet it’s the most deliquescent. (66) 7
Just as Tony believes in a “real literature,” 8 he also believes in an “official history.” To him, real
literature addresses themes of substantial philosophical weight. Judging from the historical
events he chooses, “official” history to him is simply the most commonly mentioned and
7 Compare this to a line from Flaubert’s Parrot: “Or is it just that the past seems to contain more local colour than
the present?” (15) 8 See my page 14.
25
mainstream events that even the most casual follower of world news would know. Nothing on
his list risks being buried beneath the sands of time, at least not during his lifetime. This is all
front-page stuff that will doubtlessly fill the pages of history texts read by the generation after
Tony. He even identifies a “normal” reaction to these events, a response that would seem to
come from a supposedly balanced person who chooses not to react too radically in the direction
of either hope or fear. However, he doesn’t “trust” these recent events as much as events he
would have read about in a history book. The historical episodes that he might have read about
during his schooldays have a deeper permanence, or what Tony identifies as a sense of being
“agreed upon.” The system of historiography is among the primary tools that Tony uses to
legitimize and confirm the content of his memories. Ironically, the events from recent history
that Tony mentions are also “agreed upon” in a way. The news writers, the public, and the
politicians agree to make these the events that occupy the consciousness of the common citizen.
The “paradox” that Tony identifies relates to his idea of corroboration. Older, “agreed upon”
history receives more support from published corroboration, whereas the events of more recent
history seem more likely to be distorted by subjectivity. Of course, as Tony learns in Joe Hunt’s
class, even published history results from the subjective state of the historian, so maybe Tony’s
paradox doesn’t hold up after all. Maybe all events, regardless of era, should be hard to trust.
The fantasy space of the trial
The history-writing tradition is only one of the molds that Tony employs for constructing
his story. Law is another. Tony often enters “the fantasy space of the trial,” a psychological zone
that acts as a lens for the interpretation of events and what they might mean. 9 Like literature, the
9 See my pg. 14 for Ian Ward’s discussion of how readers themselves might psychologically enter courtroom scenes
depicted in literature.
26
law carries a sense of legitimacy and institutional authority that can reassure us as we navigate a
confusing world. When inside the fantasy space of the trial, a literary character imagines being
before an imaginary judge or jury. Mentally entering an imaginary courtroom serves several
functions. 1) Whatever is thought by the character gains credibility by virtue of the fact that it
exists within a well-established social and legal institution. 2) The character’s thoughts begin to
resemble a testimony or confession. With this, the thoughts shed their interiority as they are
projected outside to an imaginary audience. 3) The character’s thoughts take on more certainty as
elements of a known, plotted story, since a legal case has a beginning, middle, and end.
Tony Webster enters the “fantasy space of the trial” at several key moments in the novel.
These moments are signaled linguistically by legally-charged words that he uses to think about
his situation. Tony has an unusual fixation on “corroboration.” 10
Barnes forces the reader to
notice the word through sheer force of repetition. Other words such as “proof,” “confirmation,”
or “verification” could have been used in its place, but those terms lack the strong legal sense of
“corroboration.” This is not the only term floating through the book that has a pronounced legal
undertone. I have already noted Adrian’s choice of the word “testimony” when he talks about
Robson’s suicide (20). More than any other character in the novel, Tony uses an assortment of
noticeably legal terminology that mentally positions him within the fantasy space of the trial.
When Tony meets with Alex to learn the details of Tony’s death, he sees a newspaper
clipping that sends him into this mental space:
Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. “Tragic Death of
‘Promising’ Young Man.” They probably kept that headline permanently set up in type.
The verdict of the coroner’s inquest had been that Adrian Finn (22) had killed himself
10
See my pg. 9 for J. Christopher Rideout’s ideas on narrative rationality.
27
“while the balance of his mind was disturbed.” I would have sworn on oath that Adrian’s
was the one mind which would never lose its balance. (53-54)
Tony is irritated that such a generic headline would be used for his unique friend Adrian. A
permanently set headline fits into the synchronic paradigm of history. From the point of view of
the news, a death like Adrian’s fits into a pattern. The structure that contains such an event will
be repeated in the future, so the headline type must remain set. Moreover, including Adrian’s age
in parentheses reproduces the journalistic formatting that Tony sees with his own eyes. It adds to
the clinical, impersonal way that the newspaper represents Adrian. Tony’s response to his
feelings on this matter is to “swear on oath,” but he notes that
[…] in the law’s view, if you killed yourself you were by definition mad, at least at the
time you were committing the act. The law, and society, and religion all said it was
impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. (54)
The law is a structure used to make sense of a confusing world. It often defines abstract notions
such as “madness.” In this passage, Tony compares law to society and religion, other artificial
structures that humankind uses to ascribe meaning and frame complex situations. He notes that
the issue of suicide is a convergence point where all three of these structures agree. This
convergence reminds us of Tony’s syncretic approach to legal, historical, and literary narrative
strategies. It is also similar to Tony’s blending of diachronic, synchronic, and impressionistic
narrative approaches.
Tony relies on “corroboration” heavily throughout The Sense of an Ending. At the
beginning of part Two, Tony notes that “as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less
corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been” (65). His sense of
identity destabilizes as the supporting cast of his life begins to disappear. Corroboration is
28
essential for positively defining the self and the past against a backdrop of uncertainty. Adding to
this unease, Tony claims that “Even if you have assiduously kept records—in words, sounds,
pictures—you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping” (65).
Despite our confidence in apparently objective forms of documentation, we must recognize that
to document is to make choices about what should and shouldn’t be recorded. The choice of
what to document and how to do results from a subjective state of mind.
Before meeting with adult Veronica for the second time in the retirement phase of the
novel, Tony sees a girl on the train moving her head to music inaudible to everyone else (124). It
triggers a memory of young Veronica dancing to a 45 in Tony’s room. He tells Veronica about
the memory, and to Tony’s surprise, she says “I wonder why you remembered that” (126). Tony
understands this as a “moment of corroboration” which gives him a “return of confidence” (126).
The fact that Veronica also apparently remembers this event brings the event closer to something
witnessed in Tony’s mind. While he may lack full confidence in his own memory, the idea that
somebody else remembers it too gives Tony an increased feeling that it really happened. In the
line following Tony’s return to confidence, he notes that “she was more smartly dressed this
time; her hair was under control and seemed less grey” (126). It appears Veronica’s credibility
has increased in Tony’s eyes due to her mode of dress. He is more inclined to believe her
because she is dressed better this time, perhaps like someone making an appearance in court. Her
hair looks closer to how it did during their youth, supporting Tony’s feeling that she is the same
person who was there to experience the event in the past.
Despite Tony’s surge in confidence, one must consider Veronica’s statement in light of
the coy and evasive manner in which she usually interacts with him. She avoids following her
sparse statement with any sort of explanation. There is the possibility of an implied parenthetical
29
“I wonder why [you think] you remembered that” when she speaks to Tony. As we read on the
first page of the novel, there is a difference between witnessing and remembering. The list of
images Tony “remembers” includes the bathwater in which Adrian kills himself, although Tony
was, of course, not actually there to see it. Tony is reassured by Veronica’s “corroboration,” but
it might not be as plausible as he thinks. Here, Veronica might criticize Tony’s ability to
remember accurately in the first place.
While the repetition of terms like “corroboration” positions Tony within a type of
ongoing trial, there are other times when he specifically envisions himself before a court. Tony’s
trip to Veronica’s family home provides material for both concrete memories and future
speculation about what might have happened there. An awkward dinner table scene reminds the
reader of Tony’s two main forms of constructing meaning and forming the narrative of his
experience. As Mr. and Mrs. Ford ask Tony questions, he feels as if he is being “examined” for
his “credentials,” “as if I were before a court of inquiry” (30). All of this loaded language
demonstrates that Tony is within the psychological fantasy space of the trial. Moments of
external pressure from others are projected into imaginary courtroom spaces that instill the scene
with a feeling of persecution or prosecution. Before arriving at the house, Tony is concerned that
his large suitcase will make him “look like a potential burglar” (28). Veronica’s father takes
Tony’s luggage into the house “as if responding to the distant laws of hospitality” (29). Tony
regards Veronica’s brother as the “appointed judge” of whether or not Tony is a suitable
boyfriend (47). The terms “burglar,” “laws,” and “judge” seem coincidental enough; however,
their proximity to one another within this passage calls attention to them. These terms must be
seen alongside the large quantity of other legal vocabulary in the novel. After the family dinner,
Veronica and Tony go to separate bedrooms; Veronica doesn’t give Tony a goodnight kiss. He
30
then reflects on how things might have gone differently “had we been in a novel” (30). This
episode includes two of the main ways Tony uses structures of meaning: the law and literary
fiction. He can’t go long without using both of these lenses to frame the events of his life.
Tony also envisions himself on trial as he recalls his breakup with Veronica. She breaks it
off because she feels that the relationship isn’t “heading” anywhere (37). In other words, their
connection has lost its sense of direction and failed to continue along its plot trajectory. Tony
asks “Does it have to head somewhere?” to which Veronica replies “Isn’t that what relationships
do?” before telling him “I don’t stagnate” (37). Veronica wants the plot of the relationship to
remain in motion and Tony prevents this from happening. She wants the relationship to reach
another stage, which in itself could be a miniature ending. The structure would include the end of
dating, the end of engagement, and so forth. Recalling the end of the conversation, Tony thinks
In my mind, this was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Or have I just
remembered it this way to make it seem so, and to apportion blame? If asked in a court of
law what happened and what was said, I could only attest to the words “heading,”
“stagnating,” and “peaceable.” … I’d also swear to the truth of the biscuit tin; it was
burgundy red, with the Queen’s smiling profile on it.” (38)
Many terms in this passage indicate the continued obsession with chronology and identifying
specific beginnings and ends. As with most of the details that Tony recalls, there is a strong
undercurrent of blame, guilt, and responsibility—just as when the beginning of WWI as
discussed in Tony’s childhood classroom, blame must be assigned to whomever initiated the
beginning of the end. In this scene, there is an overlap between legal plots and personal history-
writing. Tony definitively remembers “heading” and “stagnating,” which indicate starting and
31
stopping, a plot lurching into motion and then coming to a halt. Tony would attest to them,
demonstrating the absolute importance of plots and chronology in the courtroom.
Several scenes after the breakup suggest that Tony’s experience with Veronica pushes
him toward the legalistic way of looking back on his life and assembling his narrative. Once she
breaks up with Tony, Veronica starts dating Adrian. Adrian writes to Tony asking for his
approval of the arrangement, to which Tony obliges but writes back cautioning that Adrian must
be careful because Veronica surely “suffered damage a long way back” (46). Tony burns
Adrian’s letter, admitting that the action is “melodramatic, I agree, but I plead youth as a
mitigating circumstance” (46). The multiple senses of the word “damage” position us once again
in the realm of legality, but more importantly Tony frames his immaturity as a “mitigating
circumstance.” 11
If he pleads youth as a mitigating circumstance in his life in general, guilt and
responsibility are shifted away from him. In Tony’s mind, any problems are a result of someone
else’s preexisting damages and not his own actions.
Reflecting on the possible source of Veronica’s damage, Tony admits that “I have no
evidence, anecdotal or documentary. But I remember what Old Joe Hunt said when arguing with
Adrian: that mental states can be inferred from actions” (48). Once again there is a clear link
between legal narratives and personal historiography. By talking about evidence in the context of
Hunt’s history class, Tony reinforces the link between history and law. Tony doesn’t specifically
exclude himself from his theory about personal damage. He concedes that “You might even ask
me to apply my ‘theory’ to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and
what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness.
I’m not sure I could answer this, to be honest” (49). Explicitly legal terminology is not as present
11
According to the Farlex online legal dictionary, “mitigating circumstances may be considered to reduce damage awards or the extent of the defendant's liability.”
32
in this passage as some of the others I’ve pointed out. However, Tony’s consideration of
reliability, truthfulness, and honesty positions him psychologically within a courtroom. Here, he
blends the persona of the defendant with that of the unreliable narrator. This creates a link
between Tony’s legalistic and literary narrative modes.
After Veronica meets with Tony and claims to have burned Adrian’s diary, she hands
him an envelope.12
This envelope contains a photocopy of a malicious letter Tony wrote to
Veronica and Adrian after being told about their relationship (106). Decades later, Tony is a bit
disgusted by the vitriol he expressed during his youth, thinking “All I could plead was that I had
been its author then, but was not its author now. Indeed, I didn’t recognize that part of myself
from which the letter came. But perhaps this was simply further self-deception” (107). The
deliberate choice of the word “plead” shows Tony once again putting himself on trial. The
insistence on authorship and how an author changes over time adds the literary dimension to
Tony’s statement. Also, the phrase “recognizing that part of myself” places Tony outside of his
own actions, as if he is evaluating himself as a character in the story that he crafts.
Both of the episodes involving a burnt document involve Tony “pleading” something, as
if before a court of law. In fact, Tony predictably frames everything that Veronica does to the
diary as a crime: “First theft, then arson, I thought, with a spurt of anger. But I told myself to
keep treating her like an insurance company” (101). The deliberate choice of the terms “theft”
and “arson” indicate the increasing impossibility of Tony seeing any type of documentation or
correspondence outside of a legal framework. He also can’t help but “treat her like an insurance
company,” keeping their discourse in a cool, bureaucratic, and ultimately legal mode. Once he
returns home from their meeting, Tony reasons, “I thought her quite capable of arson to punish
12
For another instance of Barnes using this motif, see the episode in Flaubert’s Parrot in which Ed Winterton claims to have burnt a collection of Flaubert’s secret and unpublished love letters (46).
33
me for ancient wrongs and failings” (103). Not only does he define Veronica’s action using a
legal term (one that is somewhat hyperbolic for the actual deed itself), but he also views her
crime as a “punishment” doled out to him for his own crime. They are now legal opponents
rather than simply former lovers.
The psychological fantasy space of the trial is by no means a Tony Webster idiosyncrasy.
Another literary figure who imaginatively places himself before judgment is Alexander Portnoy.
The motif of guilt in Portnoy’s Complaint can be traced as a catalyst for Alex’s entry into this
fantasy space. After either biting his mother or kicking her in the shin (he can’t remember which
but it could be both), Alexander is berated by his parents for refusing to apologize. Recalling the
episode, adult Alex thinks “Alexander Portnoy, aged five, you are hereby sentenced to hang by
your neck until you are dead for refusing to say sorry to you mother” (Roth 123). Although five-
year old Alex probably wouldn’t have conceived the event in terms of sentencing and hanging at
the time (King Lear is alluded to in the same paragraph), his adult self relies on the vocabulary of
legal punishment in his memory of what happened. He retroactively imposes the fantasy of the
trial on an event from his early childhood. His parents are more concerned with hearing an
apology than what the actual crime was. As in The Sense of an Ending, (taking) responsibility is
paramount.
During a psychoanalytic session, Portnoy confuses different types of authority figures,
thinking “Doctor, Your Honor, whatever your name is […]” as he tells his psychoanalyst his
thoughts. It appears that speaking to any sort of authority figure takes on the feeling of giving
testimony. If Portnoy were Catholic, he might have a similar attitude toward priests. The
imaginary sentence to hang as well as the confusion of who “Your Honor” is both point back to
the need to accept responsibility.
34
At the end of the book, as Portnoy is fiercely thrashed and berated by his new
acquaintance Naomi, he most explicitly enters the fantasy of the trial, in a scene in which the
“judge” uses a similar rhetorical approach to shut down the defendant: for “crimes too numerous
to mention,” Alex is “sentenced to a terrible case of impotence” (272). Portnoy imagines himself
responding, to which the screaming judge explodes “don’t bullshit me with legalisms, Portnoy.
You knew right from wrong. You knew you were degrading another human being” (272).
Compare this to one of Tony’s fantasy episodes in which the judge accuses him of inventing a
suppressed memory about a night beside a river with Veronica: “oh please, Mr. Webster, spare
us your sentimental lucubrations. This is a court of law, which deals with fact” (131). Although
Portnoy is told to drop the “legalisms” and Tony is told to stop being so sentimental, the
imaginary judge in both cases limits the type of vocabulary and argumentation that the
defendants are allowed to use. The court acts as an arbiter of what is linguistically possible.
Writing Letters, Writing Narrative
Whether in the form of diary, note, letter, or e-mail, writing is a constant theme in
Barnes’s novel. There is an epistolary dimension to the literary life about which Tony fantasizes.
Also, the examples of correspondence in the novel help to blur the lines between legal, historical,
and literary narratives. As a source of proof or documentation, correspondence fits into Tony’s
legal-historical point of view. Tony’s focus on tone and vocabulary places his correspondence in
a literary context. The lingering uncertainty over whether any piece of correspondence is simply
something that happened or something meaningful blurs the distinction between diachronic and
synchronic narratives. A fragmentary, incomplete piece of correspondence, like the single diary
pages Veronica sends to Tony, can be seen as impressionistic in White’s schema.
35
The first mention of a character’s personal writing occurs after Robson’s suicide. Tony
claims that “As for his suicide note, which according to rumor (Brown again) had read ‘Sorry,
mum,’ we felt that it had missed a powerful educative opportunity” (15). Although Tony and his
friends lack the hard proof of holding the physical document, they proceed to analyze it as a text.
Tony finds its contents lacking and seems to think Robson could have been a bit more
opportunistic since his suicide would lend gravity to his final words. Tony thinks “His action had
been unphilosophical, self-indulgent, and inartistic: in other words, wrong” (15). He thinks a
suicide note should have some of the same artistic qualities that he would hope to see in a good
piece of literature. For Tony it is a piece of evidence, but it should also be philosophical and
artistic. This demonstrates the tendency to merge the literary and the legal. Robson’s supposed
final statement, “Sorry, mum,” can be taken as both an apology and a confession of guilt and
responsibility. Thinking of the note in terms of guilt, responsibility, and evidence helps to
position it within the landscape of legality that dominates so much of the novel. This early
episode sets the tone for the way that Tony will view other pieces of correspondence from a legal
perspective.
During his final year of college, Tony receives a letter from Adrian essentially requesting
his blessing to date Veronica. Tony decides he “liked the hypocrisy of a letter whose point was
not just to tell me something I might not have found out anyway (or not for quite a while)” (45).
He views it as a slap in the face and unnecessary. However, he admits that “Again, I must stress
that this is my reading now of what happened then. Or rather, my memory now of my reading
then of what was happening at the time” (45). This admission reinforces the complex
relationship between event, documentation, interpretation, and memory. Event and
documentation fit into the processionary narrative structure, interpretation into the structural, and
36
memory into the impressionistic. As documentation is lost or discarded, Tony must rely on
memory. He not only attempts to remember the content of the letter but also to remember how he
was feeling about that content during a particular time. Even if Tony could see the letter again
before his eyes, it still might raise the problem of what Adrian himself calls the “inadequacies of
documentation” (18). There is such a wide range of human error and imperfection that even
written documentation, in all its apparent stability, becomes questionable as a real indicator of
what happened in the past.
Tony responds to Adrian’s letter with a postcard that has strong undertones of law,
history, and literature. He writes, “Being in the receipt of your epistle of the 21st, the undersigned
begs to present his compliments and wishes to record that everything is jolly fine by me, old
bean” (45). The official, formal sound of the message, with words like “receipt,” “undersigned,”
and “record” reminds the reader of the legal vocabulary on which Tony so often relies. The
antiquated sound of the sentence structure is reminiscent of a historical document that would
have been written before Tony and Adrian’s era. Finally, the contrived artificiality of the
language points more subtly toward literature—the language has a very constructed sound to it as
it wears its artifice on its sleeve. Tony’s careful choice of the word “epistle” has historical
implications and also reinforces my claim that Barnes’s book has some elements of an epistolary
novel.
Tony is aware of how changes in communication technology shape our consciousness. A
pronounced contrast in the novel is the shift from handwritten correspondence to e-mail and
other digital forms of communication. Prior to this, Tony “depend[s] on the rudimentary
communications system known as the postcard” when he travels to the United States after
college (49). He notes that his parents had no choice but to send him away without having the
37
ability to check on him all the time. He compares the slowness of conventional mail to the world
of “mobile phones, email, and Skype” that he lives in when the novel takes place (49). Email,
with its potential for instant gratification, allows Tony’s later communications with Veronica and
her brother to be more obsessive. He even admits, “I wanted her to think I might be waiting
whenever she clicked on her inbox” (98). Letters are a form of personal presence and testimony.
Email takes this a step further in this case by making Tony feel that he can always be there,
always lurking. He becomes persistent and unavoidable, forcibly planting himself in the
consciousness of those with whom he corresponds.
There is an instance of persistent letter-writing in the novel that shows Tony’s general
reluctance to give up once he has his mind set on settling an issue. When Tony reflects on his
incessant emails to Veronica about Adrian’s diary, he compares this situation to a confrontation
with an insurance company that occurred when he was married to Margaret. Tony’s insurance
company attributes cracks in the foundation of their house to a lime tree that is in the front yard,
and they propose the solution of removing the tree (92). Based on the “principle of not
kowtowing to unseen bureaucrats” (92), Tony begins a long and painful series of letters to the
insurance company that raises new and irritating questions each time, essentially holding up the
process of removing the tree. He wants to come across as a “pedantic, unignorable bore,” causing
the company to realize “it would make bean-counting sense for them to just close the case”
(93).13
This incident reinforces the link in Tony’s mind between correspondence and legality. He
sees his letters as part of a building case file. His approach to dealing with this legal structure is
to be relentless and “pedantic.” Tony recalls this episode to draw a parallel to his strategy for
emailing Veronica: “I was determined to be polite, unoffendable, persistent, boring, friendly […]
I would wear her down with niceness, and I would get Adrian’s diary” (91). In both cases, he has
13
See also p. 11 for a discussion of “closing the case.”
38
a goal in mind that lies at the end of a long bureaucratic tunnel. He operates within the rules of a
legal system, but he games the system by overusing correspondence and overwhelming the
person on the receiving end. Tony takes actions that are allowable within a system, but pushes
them to an annoying limit to wear down both the insurance company and, later, Veronica in
order to get what he wants. He sees the end of the debate with the insurance company as “closing
the case.” Since he makes an analogy between the lime tree episode and badgering Veronica for
Adrian’s diary, we can say that he would view the reception of the diary as “closing the case” as
well.
Although Tony never obtains the full diary, Veronica does send him the teaser of a single
photocopied page that clearly comes from the middle of a long section. Adrian tries to figure out
if the dynamics of human relationships can be modeled mathematically (94). This is another
instance in which a character in the novel uses artificial structures or institutions to frame a
narrative of human events. Adrian, more mathematically inclined than Tony, uses an equation
rather than law. His diary entry is, however, a thought experiment and he acknowledges that
human relationships might need to be “expressed in notations which are logically improbable
and mathematically insoluble” (94). Adrian tests a structural approach to forming a narrative
while recognizing the limitations of the approach at the same time. Therefore, Tony’s approach
to narrative, while not explicitly mathematical, might be subject to the same scrutiny. Law,
history, and literature may all have foundations that are more shakable than Tony realizes. At the
end of the diary page that Tony receives, Adrian writes “Or we might try to draw the
responsibility more narrowly and apportion it more exactly. And not use equations and integers
but instead express matters in traditional narrative terminology. So, for instance, if Tony…” (95).
This is all that Tony gets to see. We can see that even in the midst of his thought experiment,
Adrian retains some faith in returning to “traditional narrative terminology.” However, the
attempt to use math in the first place reminds us that we must evaluate the usefulness and
accuracy of any structure to which narrative might be molded.
Chapter 3: Conclusion
I never even managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an
honest man; neither a hero nor an insect” (5).
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
One needs turn no further than Flaubert’s Parrot to both deepen an understanding of The
Sense of an Ending and to get an idea of how Barnes’ more recent work fits into his general
aesthetic. Barnes’ earlier protagonist Geoffrey Braithwaite also works on a project that fights
against the fragmentation and frustrating unknowability of the past. Many of the same problems
regarding proof and certainty haunt both novels. As Braithwaite conducts his biographical
exploration of Flaubert, he ponders the classic debate regarding the separation of author from
text. He is particularly fascinated by the biographer or historian’s obsession with the possessions
left behind by an author: “The image, the face, the signature; the 93 percent copper statue and the
Nadar photograph; the scrap of clothing and the lock of hair. What makes us randy for relics?
Don’t we believe the words enough? Do we think the leavings of a life contain some ancillary
truth?” (12). This recalls Tony’s desire for corroboration that will be his “ancillary truth” to back
up what he remembers. Tony relics are all about the words—the personal items that are truly
valuable to him as sources of truth are the letters, notes, and e-mails that feature the written
40
word. Indeed, Tony cares about the “leavings of a life,” but they must be the sort of leavings that
contain text, his preferred form of corroboration.
There are other times in Flaubert’s Parrot where Braithwaite’s biographical project
might cause the reader to recall Tony Webster’s various “projects” upon which he embarks.
Realizing that “I am now older than Flaubert ever was,” Braithwaite wonders
Is it ever the right time to die? … Is it better not to have the dreams, the work, and then
the desolation of uncompleted work? Perhaps … we should prefer the consolation of non-
fulfillment … the pleasure of anticipation, and then, years later, not the memory of deeds
but the memory of past anticipations? Wouldn’t that keep it all cleaner and less painful?
(22)
When Tony imagines his daughter Susie thinking about his countless unfinished projects, he
gives himself the consolation that at least these activities keep the brain engaged. For Tony, there
seems to be more satisfaction in process than in final product. Braithwaite asks many of the same
questions that float through Tony’s head about processes and endpoints. Tony, too, is interested
in the reduction of past harm and damage, a clean and tidy version of the past free of end
products that are ultimately failures. He wants to remember the process of “getting there” as
painless, regardless of whether or not an ending is even available. Although Tony does
eventually uncover the “meaning” of the mystery involving Veronica’s family and Adrian, it is
encircled by a feeling of non-fulfillment. This revelation doesn’t carry with it the satisfaction or
serenity that Tony hoped it would. We arrive at the end of the novel without a sense of anything
being neatly tied up and settled: “There is great unrest” (163) is all we are left with. The only
consolation that Tony can take is from the heuristic process of his detective game. The case is
never truly closed. The “memory of past anticipations,” as Geoffrey Braithwaite puts it, has a
41
greater potential for remaining pleasant because anticipation precedes disappointment. Choosing
to only remember the anticipation and not the unfulfilling result will keep the past “cleaner and
less painful.”
Concerning suffering, Braithwaite cites Flaubert’s line: “If you participate in life, you
don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of
thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature” (49-50). This might point us toward another
rationale for why Tony constructs his narrative using the systems of law, history, and literature
that are available to him. By using these systems to frame his narrative, he is able to step outside
his own life and become like a nonparticipant in his own past. These structures might offer him a
way to distance himself from the events and reduce the pain associated with his memories.
Suffering and enjoyment are flattened out as he takes a colder, more clinical approach to seeing
things “objectively.” Tony paints with the broad strokes of law, history, or fiction; his art is to
contain the events. He wishes to settle the past and give himself the closure and finality that
come with no longer being a participant.
The use of a system such as law, literature, or history requires a particular reading or
interpretation of the events that follows a set of established conventions. When Flaubert’s
Parrot’s Geoffrey Breathwaite complains about how much he hates critics and their tendency to
over-read texts, he wonders, “ … is there a perfect reader somewhere, a total reader? … My
reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but it’s not pointless in
terms of pleasure” (75). As Tony pushes toward the “sense of an ending,” he is aware of the
problematic nature and potential impossibility of a “total reading” or a “total reader.” Even the
apparently solid systems and frameworks that Tony operates within are incurably subjective and
can never offer the true security and finality that ideal versions of these systems would.
42
We must wonder why Tony chooses to begin the narrative where he does. Why is “school
where it all began,” as Tony puts it? (5). The first memory Tony thinks about is when Adrian
entered his group of friends. This tells us that what we are reading is presumably in part Adrian’s
story. However, The Sense of an Ending is not just one person’s story. It is the story of a network
of relationships: Tony and his school friends, Tony and Veronica, Adrian and Veronica, the
relationship between Tony and his memories, and so forth. Although we read multiple stories,
the title of the novel uses a definite article and speaks of one ending—but whose ending is it?
This ending is the convergence point where all of these individual stories have more or less
wrapped themselves up and come to an end as a whole. The shifting connections between all of
these different stories have stabilized, Tony’s questions are answered to his satisfaction, and
change is over. On the final page of the novel, Tony thinks, “You get towards the end of life—
no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life” (163).
This is one of the sources of the “sense” of an ending. Although the world still changes around
Tony and other people’s stories continue to swirl and metamorphose around him, his set of
stories has begun to settle. The meaning of the stories has become more stable in Tony’s mind
and the shifting connections between the different stories has stopped changing.
Thinking about the way a previously shifting story can begin to settle in, Tony ponders,
“… the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us
that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—
mainly—to ourselves” (104). Here, Tony shows his awareness of the idea of ownership when it
comes to narratives. When we tell a story, to whom does it truly belong? To some extent, all
stories, like history, begin with a sort of collective ownership in the sense that readers or listeners
43
can “challenge the account.” 14
Depending on who is around to corroborate different details of
the narrative, depending on what evidence is available at any given time, the entire shape of the
story can change shortly after its inception. Even if one individual authors a story, this person
must always operate in the context of a sea of other authors. In this passage, Tony also draws a
hard line between what events really are and how they are represented through the mimetic
system of narrative. There is the life and there is the life story, but they are fundamentally unable
to overlap and match up perfectly.
Narrative is, of course, always an act of imperfect representation. In thinking about whom
this representation is meant to convince, Tony comes to a lonely realization regarding audience.
Maybe all life stories start off as products for an audience to interpret or consume. As time
moves forward the original audience, spectators to the life that became the narrative, starts to die
off. The story is told only to the self once there is nobody left with whom to argue the details.
Tony is aware that he tells different intertwining and sometimes competing stories. He even
apologizes to the reader at times when he realizes that he has wandered off track. When he thinks
about his American girlfriend from his trip overseas, he thinks “Annie was part of my story, but
not of this story” (50). As he crafts a narrative, Tony remembers all kinds of impressions and
details. There is occasional confusion about to which story they really belong. Does the “Story of
Tony” include beneath its umbrella the stories of his relationships with others, or is it something
different altogether?
Long after his aspirations to lead a literary life have faded, Tony still identifies himself as
a writer. In describing the origins of his marriage to Margaret, he remembers, “I did a slightly
odd thing when I first met Margaret. I wrote Veronica out of my life story” (76). He
acknowledges that regardless of what factually happened, he is the author of how the story is
14
See my pg. 21 for a discussion of history being “agreed upon.”
44
presented to others. It’s hard to imagine that Tony sincerely views this erasure as “odd,” because
throughout the novel he is aware of the artificial and limited nature of narrative. His use of the
qualifier “life” shows once more that he consciously tells multiple stories all at once. There is his
life story, but it is interwoven with smaller diverging stories that he tells at the same time. He
goes on to realize
The odder part was that it was easy to give this version of my history because that’s what
I’d been telling myself anyway. I viewed my time with Veronica as a failure—her
contempt, my humiliation—and expunged it from the record. I had kept no letters, and
only a single photograph, which I hadn’t looked at in ages. (76)
Tony knows that telling one’s life story to oneself is quite a bit different than presenting it to an
external audience. Having already succeeded at deceiving himself, it makes it that much more
convenient to pass the incomplete story along to others. The feeling of failure points toward the
sense of loss and incompleteness that Tony battles at every step of his storytelling process. This
passage is another moment in which storytelling, history, and law are brought together. A
tampered-with and partial “life story” becomes a “version of history.” Of course, Tony can’t go
long without framing the events in his life legally—he doesn’t “forget to mention” or “avoid
talking about” Veronica—he intentionally frames this omission as “expunging her from the
record.” Immediately after using this legal terminology, he talks about letters and photographs,
which are always important physical documents for Tony when he tries to assemble what he sees
as corroboration.
Perhaps one way of approaching Tony’s relentless pursuit of narrative is that the process
is more important than the product. In the description of his life after the divorce from Margaret,
we read “Also, in my more emptied life, I came up with various ideas which I termed ‘projects,’
45
perhaps to make them sound feasible. None of them came to anything. Well, that’s no matter; or
any part of my story” (59). It’s reasonable to think that the pursuit of Adrian’s diary along with
the badgering of Veronica and Brother Jack is another project that Tony takes on to occupy his
time. He does refer to himself as “a man who found comfort in his own doggedness” when he
thinks about his email exchanges with Veronica (97). It seems that he might get more
entertainment from the commitment to the process itself rather than the end result of the pursuit.
In a period of limited contact with Veronica, Tony recalls that he “restrung my blind, descaled
the kettle, mended the split in an old pair of jeans” (128). Much of what he does is geared toward
passing the time with projects that may not “come to anything” as he puts it.
As I have shown, Tony structures and stabilizes his stories by using legal, historical, and
literary narrative strategies. There are other smaller strategies at play, such as the reliance on
written correspondence, that help to unite these strategies. A letter can serve the triple function of
legal corroboration, historical documentation, and the basis of an epistolary novel. Even
something as simple as the act of letter-writing can be regarded as a socially supported
institution. So, why does Tony need these narrative techniques? The journey to tell the story that
makes up The Sense of an Ending is a fusion of various structures and systems available to him.
Finding out what can be true within any story involves excluding what is false. As Foucault
states, “the will to truth, like other systems of exclusion, relies on institutional support
(pedagogy, the book system, publishing, libraries, laboratories)” (11). Recognizing the difficulty
of establishing any sort of truth without a predetermined structure, Tony taps into these
“institutions of support” to give him a framework for his story. These structures make it easier to
figure out what is missing and find the appropriate information to fit into place. In The
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Experience of Nothingness, Michael Novak echoes Foucault’s statement about the exclusionary
properties of truth:
The decision to choose scientific methods and, in particular behavioral methods as a way
of life is first of all to select certain features of human life (clarity, quantifiability,
function, instrumentality) from among others. It is secondly, to evade other sorts of
questions and values, and thus to rig the meaning of ‘fact’.” (18)
For Tony, there is nothing mandatory or inevitable about the narrative strategies he uses to
reassemble the past. Novak would say that he chooses these methods as a way of selecting data
for his story. In effect, Tony’s tendency to privilege the values of legality, history, and literature
excludes other values and thus delimits what fact is allowed to be within his storytelling
approach.
Noticing and documenting Tony’s approach to coping with narrative uncertainty is one
thing, but the recognition that such a mental space exists raises a number of questions. What is
its origin? What is its appeal as a way of seeing the world? Much of Tony’s process appears to
be geared toward reconciling instability and uncertainty. He isn’t blind to the limits of memory,
nor is he unaware of the ultimately flawed nature of the narrative systems that people use to tell
the stories of their lives every day. Memory always involves a sense of loss; something always
must be missing from the picture. Storytelling, too, is a selective process. There’s no reasonable
way to include everything. Every single detail carries with it the implication of the details that
have left out by choice or accident. In the second section of the book, Tony thinks about another
type of loss, reflecting that “when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and
bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed;
children growing away from you, friends dying” (65). Law, history, and literature are structures
47
of relative stability that help to offset the sensation of this loss. These systems that Tony puts his
faith into help to buffer against the looming sense of loss that he has experienced from the time
of his youth.
When Tony speaks to his solicitor Mr. Gunnell about Veronica’s choice to withhold the
diary, Gunnell provides the legal definition of “theft”: “an intention permanently to deprive the
owner of the thing stolen” (78). This moment is a microcosm of one of Tony’s overarching
obsessions through the course of the novel: he thinks about loss all the time, more specifically
the possibility of being deprived permanently. “Where the imperfections of memory meet the
inadequacies of documentation,” as Adrian would put it (65), is also a crossroads for all sorts of
other loss, incompleteness, and impermanence. Among Tony’s nagging anxieties is the fear of
permanent loss, a loss that offers no possibility of filling in the blanks and picking up the pieces
once again.
By the end of the novel, the question remains open about how the reader should regard
Tony. He is neither overwhelmingly admirable, nor undeniably bad. Though he self-identifies as
pedantic and boring, there’s nothing sinister enough about him to make him a villain. The worst
thing that he does to the reader’s knowledge is to send the malicious letter to Adrian and
Veronica at the beginning of their relationship (104). However, Tony isn’t exactly a hero either.
His isolation and occasional appearance of being at odds with society might call to the reader’s
mind the thought from Notes from Underground’s nameless protagonist that “I never even
managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man;
neither a hero nor an insect” (5). Tony is stuck somewhere in the middle, showing no qualities
that push him convincingly in the direction of either hero or insect. At this point in his life he is
quite alone and he even admits to the fact that he may have given up to some degree and
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condemned himself to a death-in-life sentence. He laments, “I thought of the things that had
happened to me over the year, and of how little I had made happen” (157). Similarly, he notes
that he “had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him” (155). He borrows Veronica’s
accusation that “he never got it” (158) when he envisions what might appear on his tombstone.
All in all, this doesn’t paint a very admirable portrait of a Tony. So, is Tony’s story of any
consequence? Can we ascribe meaning to what he does and firmly state that anything he has
done matters? We might look to Dostoevsky again for a possible answer to these questions. At
the end of The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha says
People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory,
preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such
memories with him into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And if we have only one
good memory left in our heart even that may serve someday as our salvation. (645)
Alyosha’s advice to the youth of his town might serve as a way to rescue Tony from his own
self-accusations of irrelevance and failure to take action. Although he doesn’t do much or seem
to matter much, he continues learning.
The novel begins with a scene from Tony’s grammar school education. It ends with him
knowing things he didn’t know before about himself and about the past he shares with his
friends. Tony uses his memories, regardless of how clear or unclear they may be, as the source of
a puzzle. The very act of solving the puzzle, of playing the detective, is a heuristic process that
helps the mind to grow and remain sharp as the passage of time wears at the edges of thought
and memory. Tony envisions his daughter Susie thinking, “he’s retired now, still fossicking
around with those mysterious ‘projects’ of his, doubt he’ll ever finish anything, but at least it
keeps the brain active” (67-8). Even if Tony’s storytelling project has no true external purpose—
49
for example, obtaining the diary, or convincing someone else that everything happened the way
Tony perceives it—he benefits from keeping his brain engaged. It doesn’t matter whether or not
he finishes the project. The act of doing itself is the reason and the reward. The OED defines
fossicking as searching for gold or other precious materials, or even “scanning an area for
fragments overlooked by others” (“Fossick”). Barnes makes no mistake in choosing this
particular term. Tony’s process of piecing together the past involves looking for valuable
information that may have been ignored by others who make up a part of the story.
We might question what it is exactly that we are supposed to learn from Tony—but
within that very question is the word that is the key to an answer. Tony never stops learning
about himself and about the world around him. Although his pursuit of the truth may be a
pastime, he keeps his mind active by attempting to solve an enigma. There is still some greater
understanding being built here, a step or two closer to figuring out what makes people tick and
how the pains of the human condition can be assuaged. The novel closes with the lines “There is
accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest”
(163). These lines bring the narrative full circle and act as a refrain back to what was said in Old
Joe Hunt’s history class. As long as the mind is at a state of unrest, new questions will surface
and new knowledge will accumulate.
Perhaps there is something in Tony’s struggle that most readers can relate to on some
essential level, regardless of age or nationality. Everyone wants to “get it” and few people can
say they take a legitimate joy in being confused or deceived. The inevitable failings of memory
and shakiness of supposedly objective forms of documentation will impact every human being at
some time or another. What we seek in a world that is often bewildering and confusing is
something to hold on to, something on which to anchor our experience and legitimize what we
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live through. Everyone might not use the same structures that Tony does to help make sense of
the human condition. Tony uses law, literature, and history as filters through which to understand
his experience; others might turn to religion, visual art, music, education, or any number of other
constructs. These frames and devices can make it easier to sort and organize the constant stream
of contradictory data that enters our consciousness. If we believe White, Rideout, and Kermode,
there is something naturally appealing to us about creating coherent narratives to order
experience. All Tony wants is a story that makes his experience make sense to him, which is a
desire he shares with the rest of humankind.
Works Cited
Barnes, Julian. Flaubert’s Parrot. 1984. New York: Vintage International, 1990. Print.
---. The Sense of an Ending. 2011. New York: Vintage International, 2012. Print.
Barthes, Roland. A Barthes Reader. Ed. Susan Sontag. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Print.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. 1880. Trans. Susan Oddo. New York : W. W.
Norton & Co., 2011.
---. Notes from Underground. 1864. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New
York: Random House, 1993.
“Fossick.” Oxford English Dictionary online. Web. 31 March 2014.
Foucault, Michel. “Orders of discourse.” Social Science Information 10.2 (1971): 7-30. Sage
Journals. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending. 1966. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.
Lawrence, D. H. The Rainbow. 1915. New York: Penguin Books, 2007. Print.
Novak, Michael. The Experience of Nothingness. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Print.
Rideout, J. Christopher. “Storytelling, Narrative Rationality, and Legal Persuasion.” BYU Law
Library Online. 2008. 53-86. Web.
http://www.law2.byu.edu/Law_Library/jlwi/archives/2008/LWI-14Rideout.pdf
Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. New York : Random House, 1969. Print.
Ward, Ian. Law and Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print.
White, Hayden. “The Structure of Historical Narrative.” The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on
History, Literature, and Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2010. 112-125. Print.